Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Not falling for it.

I really enjoyed the demo I got for God of War: Chains of Olympus, but there are two reasons why I'm not going to buy the game:

A) I'm pretty sure that, like any somewhat decent PSP game from a western developer, it will see an enhanced PS2 release before the year is up, and no doubt shortly thereafter all three God of War games will be available for $29.99 in a boxed trilogy pack, a la GTA, DMC, Hitman, Resident Evil, MGS, and even those WWE games, ffs.

B) Quick-time events suck. They are the most contrived bullshit play mechanic to come out of the last generation of console gaming. Chains of Olympus takes their suckitude that much further by placing them in the middle of boss fights. So yeah, if you don't manage to hit X or the Circle or whatever the fuck button in the half-second window you have, the boss recovers from their stun state and gains back a whole shitton of health. As far as I can discern from the demo, there is no way to defeat the bosses without succeeding at this retarded crap. They aren't even the same each time you try it, either, so you can't just memorize the necessary sequence of buttons to hit. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

Who the hell thought QTE's were a good idea in the first place? You'd think that something being the one real flaw in a game like RE4 would let people know that, hey, this mechanic sucks shit, and maybe they shouldn't put it in their game. Maybe this is just par for the course with GoW games. I wouldn't know; this is the first one I ever tried.

So, I had a $30 gift card to use at Circuit City, and if you got GoW:CoO there, you could get half off any PSP accessory, such as a bigger memory stick, which I could probably use. However, due to the reasons I outlined above, I held off on the game, and instead picked up the newest Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice, purely on faith (and because I already have the first three, and I might as well get it too, at this point).

A coworker lent me his copy of Call of Duty 4, too, so I'm giving that a run-through, and I want to try the multiplayer, even though I have no time to really spend on that, and would really prefer to dig deeper into Team Fortress 2 if I came across time to do so. Meanwhile, my DS pile of shame continues to mount, and so I've taken some time over the last two evenings to venture forth into Sekaiju no Meikyuu, that forest labyrinth of Etrian Odyssey (another game I need to complete before the sequel arrives)!